The billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn has issued an apology for providing capital to a group that was involved in meddling with the 2017 Alabama Senate special election.
A week after it was reported Reid Hoffman indirectly funded the group's efforts to create a disinformation campaign, he told The Washington Post he was surprised and disappointed to learn his money was used for such a purpose.
"I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing," Hoffman said. "For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track [American Engagement Technologies] — the organization I did support — more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject."
It was reported last week the 2017 experiment involved setting up a Facebook page for the contentious Alabama Senate special election. Using tactics Russia is accused of doing during the 2016 presidential election, a group called New Knowledge sought to determine how a social media campaign could impact an election using a few tricks.
The group supported Democrat and eventual winner Doug Jones, so it set up a Facebook page claiming to be conservative voters in Alabama who did not want to vote for Republican Roy Moore — who was accused of sexual misconduct decades prior. The page tried to divide GOP voters and also appeared to work in tandem with Russian bots on Twitter.
Hoffman gave $750,000 to American Engagement Technologies, which then gave a reported $100,000 to New Knowledge for the election experiment.
According to the Post, Facebook suspended the major players in the operation for violating its terms of service.
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